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TON" HTOXBOLDT.
VOYAGE ON THE APTJKEL
On account of the monotony of the steppes, Hurn-
boldt preferred to sail into the Orinocco oa the river
Apure. He hired for the purpose a broad vessel called
a pixoge, which was navigated by a steersman and
four Indians. The Apure harbours many fish, sea
cows, and tortoises, and its shores swarm, with birds ;
the river grows gradually broader, the shore on one
side is sandy and barren, on the other grown with high
stemmed trees. Humboldt was now in a territory
little known by man, and exclusively inhabited by
tigers, crocodiles, and chiguires. Sometimes the
stream was bordered by woods on both sides; these
woods commenced with bushes of sanso, which forma
a hedge four feet high, and behind them grew a kind
of paternoster or Nicaragua wood. Tigers, tapirs, and
pecaris had broken passages through the hedge to
come to water at the stream. Where the flat shore
is rather broader, and the sanso hedges grow a little
farther from the water, the space between, serves as
a resting-place for the crocodiles, and eight or ten were
frequently seen lying immovably on the sand, with
their open jaws extended. The journey had scarcely
begun, and Humboldt knew that many hundreds more
would lie in the slime of the savannahs I Besides
this, the Indian rowers assured him that a year rarely
elapsed in which two or three grown up people*
generally women, coming to draw water at the stream,,
did not fall a sacrifice to the crocodiles. In these
deserts, says Humboldt, where man lives in constant
strife with nature, the conversation turns much on
the means by which one can escape the pursuit of &
tiger, a boa or a crocodile ; every one prepares to meet
the threatening dangers. The crocodile lets loose its.
prey if one presses its eyes with the fingers, and a
young girl had lately escaped from the grasp of the
animal at San Fernando by this means, with the loss
only of the forearm, which it had "bitten ofil The